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ORIGINAL: pyroaquatic

Ah, interpretations of interpretations....

reflections of reflections.

I am done with this conversation for you have contradicted yourself far too many times for me to take you seriously.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata
My point here, however, was that viewing and interpreting Christ's teachings through the lens of doctrines that were formulated decades and centuries after the fact, often without even having any basis in them, necessarily imposes a distortion.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata
You don't have a point. What you have is a rather serious problem, because your interpretation fails to recognize the "other" as a person with feelings and desires of their own. Instead you treat them as merely an object, making 'do unto others' all about you, all about your wishes.

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ORIGINAL: GotSteel
Morality is a complicated subject which this platitude oversimplifies to the point that it's demonstrably false.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata
In fact, of course, what it really means, taking your example, is that people who wish others to accept and respect their desire to have things done to them against their will should accept and respect the wishes of others who do NOT desire things to be done to them against their will.

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ORIGINAL: pyroaquatic
In any instance I think it is a good idea to simply do onto others as you would like others to do onto your self.

This is not true and I wish that people would stop saying this on a site full of masochists. It would be horrible to convince a number of people on this site that your statement was true. Morality is a complicated subject which this platitude oversimplifies to the point that it's demonstrably false.

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ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

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ORIGINAL: GotSteel
That's my point right there, you have to put the if in there. I've tried to pick examples of people who may well enjoy having things done to them against their will.

Then its not against their will.

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ORIGINAL: ravenna

i have been raped, and i have been play-raped. (i don't think that makes me an expert on either one, but not being an expert has never stopped me before.) i was date-raped my freshman year of college, by a hot senior guy that i had a major steamy crush on. If he'd asked sweetly he could have seduced me, if he'd waited till the third date i'd have been all over him, but he wanted it the way he wanted it. He took me back to his apartment after a semi-formal party and segued smoothly from making out on his sofa to pulling my dress up and pulling my panties aside, without even asking. He pried my legs open, pinned my arms down when i started struggling, and somehow slipped a condom on with one hand before impaling me. (A smooth operator! i'm sure i wasn't the first little freshman he'd nailed that way.) And yes, it was technically rape, because i had said NO, loudly, several times, he wasn't deaf, and i was actively resisting, at least for awhile. (He was a LOT bigger than me.) And no, it wasn't technically rape, because, as he said afterwards, while wiping my sweaty, teary face and pouring me a drink (such a gentleman), "You can't rape a wet cunt." I slapped him, but it was true. The whole scene, as scary as it was, was enormously erotic for me, and i was incredibly wet and switched on, and within an hour we were both laughing and having sex again. Any guy would call this a classic case of "she wants it, her lips say no, but her other lips say yes yes yes." And did i learn anything? Yes and no. i slept with the guy for three months (i know, i know, i'm such a slut), till i dumped him for the man who much later became my first owner. But i did learn that i have a dangerous hunger for submission inside me (oh hell, i knew that already), i learned i'm a pushover for pushy guys, and i learned to be careful about who i let push me around, because underneath the Nice Girl i'm basically the Easy Virtue. i know my little misadventure was pretty tame compared to hardcore, violent rape, but that one little moment when i realized, my God, this is way out of my control, really puts one hell of an edge on my emotions when i'm play-raped, which happened a lot with one of my owners, and some of his scenarios were much MUCH scarier. But i never drew a line or made rape a limit or used a safeword, i think because deep down i've always trusted that i would survive intact -- because i did. If my real rape had been as traumatic as many of them are, i might never have recovered that trust, and when you let someone push you off that cliff, trust is all you have.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: GotSteel
Clearly I recognize the difference between other and self but by all means resort to bullshit personal attacks to try and save face.

Clearly you don't...

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ORIGINAL: Kirata
Clearly you don't, and I do not appreciate your insulting accusations. I suggest you abandon the grandiose notion that you possess super powers which render you capable of reading the minds of others and divining their intentions. What you "see" reveals only your own.

K.

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ORIGINAL: GotSteel
Morality is a complicated subject which this platitude oversimplifies to the point that it's demonstrably false.

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ORIGINAL: pyroaquatic
If you do believe this to be true then this proves your little dualistic wager to be false.

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The equation will always balance itself out in the end. It is only the end of Us if we 'destroy' the planet you know. Everything will rebuild and reconnect. Just a tiny hiccup in the reconstruction of chaos to order to chaos, simple to complex to simple.

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ORIGINAL: pyroaquatic
I don't see a point in your argument. Are you saying the wager is invalid but still trying to convert people to whatever you believe through... some.... method?

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ORIGINAL: GotSteel

I started this thread to try and get those using Pascal's Wager to grasp this point.

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ORIGINAL: GotSteel
You're not going to have any more success using pascal's wager to convert non-theists to christianity then I'd have convincing you to worship Zeus for fear of being tortured by Hades. While I'm sure it's compelling to christians who have started to question, it's useless against non-theists. You might as well threaten us with unicorns.

From a non-theist's perspective pascal's wager is an extremely crappy argument, the flaws in it are both rather obvious and well known. The only apologetics argument I'm aware of that's worse is the banana argument. You should look into quantum consciousness or at least the kalam cosmological argument.

Now I'm certainly not under the impression that accepting that Pascal's Wager is bullshit is going to cause anyone to deconvert. But I'd at least like to have an interesting conversation, not listen to theists repeatedly assert the validity of an argument so poor that even the people using it wouldn't accept it as valid if it was about anything else.

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ORIGINAL: lickenforyou
To interpret that "doing unto others as you would have others do unto you" as meaning that whatever sexual fantasies you have you can administer to people at will is laughable.

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ORIGINAL: lickenforyou
It clearly means that beyond being kind and helpful to others you shouldn't rob them, because you don't want to be robbed. You don't beat and rape others because you don't want to be beaten and robbed. And on a larger scale governments should enact laws that prevent searches without probable cause. Because you don't want to be searched or detained without reason.

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ORIGINAL: lickenforyou
Masochist wouldn't want to beat people. Under the Golden rule they want to live whatever lifestyle they want without being judged and penalized by others.

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ORIGINAL: pyroaquatic
you still cannot set yourself up to be a judge of what is right or wrong.

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ORIGINAL: GotSteel

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ORIGINAL: lickenforyou
To interpret that "doing unto others as you would have others do unto you" as meaning that whatever sexual fantasies you have you can administer to people at will is laughable.

I certainly picked an example that's obviously and even humorously morally wrong as opposed to picking an example that was morally ambiguous. It's my position that you find that statement laughable not because of anything in the golden rule but because of an ability that we posses which makes the golden rule redundant and useless.

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ORIGINAL: lickenforyou
It clearly means that beyond being kind and helpful to others you shouldn't rob them, because you don't want to be robbed. You don't beat and rape others because you don't want to be beaten and robbed. And on a larger scale governments should enact laws that prevent searches without probable cause. Because you don't want to be searched or detained without reason.

There are people who like to be beaten, raped and even robbed (that last one's called Chremastistophilia). Demonstrably these people understand that it isn't morally alright for them to beat, rape and rob others but how do they get to that position?  

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ORIGINAL: lickenforyou
Masochist wouldn't want to beat people. Under the Golden rule they want to live whatever lifestyle they want without being judged and penalized by others.

That's not necessarily true. Just because someone is a masochist doesn't mean they also wouldn't want to beat people up.